LAFAYETTE, Ind. – As the story goes, in June 1984, Jim Shook Sr. drove Mark Davis to the Haggerty Lane bridge over Interstate 65, just southeast of Lafayette.

Shook, principle commercial broker with The Shook Agency, had Davis get out of the car and look out over hundreds of acres spreading to the south, toward Indiana 38, that Shook had helped assemble options to buy.

That story has been told and retold, as it should be, as a true community legend – a pivotal piece in any history shared about the courtship of Japanese automakers in the 1980s and about how landing one shaped the way Lafayette got to where it is today.

The stakes didn’t seem as sweeping or dramatic a year or so later when Scott Frankenberger, then a struggling potter in Battle Ground, took a call from Shook’s secretary. She wanted to know what pieces Frankenberger had in stock.

“So, here comes Jim Shook Sr. and three or four others from the Chamber of Commerce,” Frankenberger said. “I don’t know who they learned it from, but it was one of those things where they’d learned the Japanese loved handmade pottery.”

Frankenberger, who knew of Shook but had never met him, said the downtown real estate broker was meticulous over the next hour or more. There was the matter of picking from among Frankenberger’s best pieces. But there also was a hierarchy to the customs of gift giving – something slightly larger or more exquisite for the top person; the rest still unique but equal in stature for the others – that Shook seemed determined to finesse as Lafayette tried to seal the deal.

Lafayette had been on the losing end on two other Japanese auto plants – Chrysler-Mitsubishi went to Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, and Toyota picked Georgetown, Kentucky. Out looking for a U.S. home was Fuji Heavy Industries, which wanted to build Subaru and Isuzu models in the Midwest.

The fact that Shook, deep in the nitty gritty of what would be a defining moment for Lafayette, was perusing the goods in a small pottery studio in Battle Ground, asking nuanced questions and seeking the advice of a local artist who might be the difference between success and failure wasn’t lost on Frankenberger.

“He knew exactly what he was doing, as I’d come to find out as I got to know him through the years,” Frankenberger said. “Jim’s a good businessman. But he's also one of the warmest people I’ve met. … That day, it just fit who he was.”

Similar stories – of development and community – have been flowing since Friday. That afternoon, Shook died in his home, surrounded, his son, Steve, said, by family. He was 87.

The story that started on the Haggerty Lane bridge and wound its way through a pottery studio on the other end of Tippecanoe County, of course, ended with Fuji picking Lafayette 30 years ago. The plant, now called Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc., employs more than 5,700 people and pumps out well north of 300,000 vehicles a year. It also was the start of Lafayette’s growth to the south and east.

“You’re going to see a lot of that when you’re thinking about Jim Shook,” said Dana Smith, a former Lafayette banker who led the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce from 1991 to 2010.

“He probably understood economic development as well as anyone going,” Smith said. “He wasn’t always one who wanted to be seen out front on a project, but chances are he was there doing the work in the background. It’s tough to pinpoint, but there always seemed to be a Shook fingerprint in there.”

In 1954, Shook joined his brother, Wes, in the family real estate business, started in 1915 by their father, Charles, and grandfather, Robert. (The firm remains in the family 103 years later.)

The Shook Agency was the one that had planned to build a residential subdivision north of Purdue, until David Ross, a Purdue benefactor and Lafayette industrialist, came with the notion of a football stadium in that spot for the university. Ross bought land nearby and swapped with the Shooks. The result: Ross-Ade Stadium at Purdue and the Hills & Dales neighborhood carved into sloping terrain on the other side of Northwestern Avenue.

The company went on to have a hand in land deals the cleared the way for Alcoa, Staley (now Tate & Lyle), the former National Homes Corp. and Wabash National.

Shook once told the J&C about how he was part of a small group of Lafayette business owners who, in the mid-‘70s assembled a 480-acre plot at Indiana 26 and Creasy Lane, thinking it would be good for industrial development for the next 15 years. Caterpillar bought it all and opened an engine plant there.

“And our group said, ‘What are we going to do for an encore?’” Shook told the J&C.

What followed was the land acquisition that led to a Greater Lafayette push for an auto plant.

“The old, ‘Location, location, location,’ he wasn’t the only one who understood that,” Smith said. “But he was the one who seemed to know how to put it all together.”

Martin Jischke, Purdue University’s president from 2000 to 2007, said Shook was among the first to greet his wife, Patty, and their family to West Lafayette.

“He was just one of those friends we made very early and very quickly,” Jischke said. “He, to me, just epitomized the friendliness of the community and the closeness of the ties of the broader community to the university here at Purdue.”

“Several times he drove his local grandchildren over to Westwood for trick-or-treating,” Patty Jischke said. (Westwood is the Purdue president’s residence along McCormick Road in West Lafayette.) “It was wonderful to see his pride in his descendants, co-mingled with his kind efforts at making us feel a part of the community.”

The Jischkes stayed in Greater Lafayette after Martin Jischke retired as president. And they saw how deep Shook’s influence went on community nonprofit boards and the arts. Just one example: Shook co-chaired the Centennial Campaign that raised $1.6 million for the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette in 2011.

“Generous. Far-sighted. Absolutely engaged,” Martin Jischke said. “There’s hardly a major project that goes on in the broader community that the Shooks aren’t part of, either quite visibly or possibly in the background. But they are tremendously engaged. … Jim epitomized that.

“We’re already missing him.”

Frankenberger said he sat on committees on any number of community art studies and other initiatives with Shook in the room.

“He wasn’t the bully in the room – he wasn’t the big, loud civic leader,” Frankenberger said. “He didn’t speak first or loudest.”

Instead, he’d take the temperature of the room and figure out what was important to the people on one side of the table and what mattered to those on the other side.

“And he’d have what made sense to everybody,” Frankenberger said. “He was just good at that. I imagine he did that in everything else he did in the community.”

“He was always so very generous with his thoughtful wisdom of what was best for the community,” said Marianne Rose, president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Greater Lafayette. “Jim was the greatest of champions for our community.”

A year or so ago, Jim and Ruthie Shook came to a dinner hosted at Frankenberger’s home. Frankenberger said he went over the story about the time Shook came to him for help with handmade pottery that played one small part in landing an auto plant.

“I finally worked up the courage to say to him that that little act back in 1986, or whenever it was, helped me as an artist, to feel like I was part of the community – that I wasn’t just out there in Battle Ground doing my dog-and-pony show for tourists,” Frankenberger said.

“For me, he was somebody who, in many ways, was the opposite of me – very successful businessman, well connected in the community, could pick up the phone and probably get the governor on the other end of it, things like that,” Frankenberger said. “At the same time, he made sure he was a good friend. He made me feel included. It made a difference for me. Jim made that difference.”

That, it turned out, was Jim Shook Sr.’s career.

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.